The PR hat really has two sides to it. For those of you who need a visual, I picture a baseball hat – worn brim forward for school PR and brim backwards for student PR. So let's start with the brim forward, you know, business first.
Believe it or not, schools need PR. I don't even mean the division itself (not that they don't need it, too) but the schools specifically. My principal recently asked me about my thoughts on teacher recruitment and retention in our rural division. I gave a stack of answer that were not technology related, but when I got thinking about my own job search, technology definitely played a part in my job search. To be more specific, when I was checking out websites to get an inside track on the vision and purpose of these schools (you know, to really wow them at the interview!), I was more than a little worried that most schools had very dated websites if any website at all. This painted a picture for me that I really was going to be moving to the sticks where my social life as I know it would end and I would have no communication with the outside world. Okay, so maybe it wasn't THAT bad, but you can see what I mean.
If we want to attract families, teachers, visitors, etc. to our school, we need to get our name out there in a positive way. Since I've come aboard, our school website has improved dramatically (and that has nothing to do with me). It is bright, vibrant, and representative of our school environment. It is updated regularly and includes links for students, teachers, and parents to use from home. It includes a calendar of events for our school and community and copies of our past and current newsletters. I realize that for most city-dwellers, this isn't a big deal. Your website has probably had a lot of these features for a long time, but for a school that previously had a website that listed staff that had retired more than 3 years ago under "Our Staff Roster"; it's a big step toward good PR.
Getting me to a rural school (especially this one) was an easy sell for me. I didn't want to be in the city and this school was offering my dream assignment. I wanted this job regardless of where it was. Most new grads, however, want to stay in a larger center or at least within commuting distance of one. They want the opportunity to have a social life (and if you are like me, access to the arts!). It is these people we need to convince. We need to use all the PR resources in our reach to show them that we can offer rivals what the big cities offer. The ETs need to come up with a PR game plan and see it through. A simple change like updating your school website is an easy start and makes a way bigger impact than you might think it would.
This is a really important topic for many schools and even divisions, Carmen. Your experience with outdated websites is all too common, and your impressions of the schools -- fair or not -- are exactly what others would think and feel. What you're really addressing here is image and identity, and there are many design resources available to support the reparation and reconstruction of identity. I'm not suggesting, and I'm sure you aren't suggesting, that we become corporate or paranoid about our websites and other materials that profile our schools, but we should pay attention.
ReplyDeleteMy mother used to tell me when I griped about wearing my brother's hand-me-downs, "Richard, we may not have the money for you to have new clothes all the time, but you can still be clean". I feel that way about websites. They don't need to have every new, glitzy feature, but they should be clean, current and functional.